Throwing his weight behind the BCCI’s new diktat that limited the time spent by families with the players during overseas tours, India head coach Gautam Gambhir said players should know that they are not on a holiday and admitted that while families can be around, the main focus of every player should be on cricket.
File Photo (IANS)
Throwing his weight behind the BCCI’s new diktat that limited the time spent by families with the players during overseas tours, India head coach Gautam Gambhir said players should know that they are not on a holiday and admitted that while families can be around, the main focus of every player should be on cricket.
Following India’s Test series loss against Australia, the Indian cricket board introduced a new set of guidelines, and one key rule stated that families could accompany players for 14 days for competitions lasting 45 days or longer. For shorter tours, family stays are restricted to a maximum of seven days.
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The new set of guidelines did not please former skipper Virat Kohli, who made it clear that he was not a fan of the new rule.
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“It’s very difficult to explain to people how grounding it is to just come back to your family every time you have something intense, which happens on the outside. I don’t think people have an understanding of what value it brings to a large extent. And I feel quite disappointed about that because it’s like people who have no control over what’s going on are kind of brought into conversations and put out at the forefront that, ‘oh, maybe they need to be kept away’,” said Kohli at the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit.
However, Gambhir, while speaking to Cheteshwar Pujara in a special interview, said that while families are important, players should understand that they are travelling for a purpose and need to remain committed to the goal.
“Families are important, but you’ve got to understand one thing. You are here for a purpose. It’s not a holiday. You’re here for a huge purpose. You’ve got very few people in that dressing room or on this tour who get this opportunity to make the country proud. So yes, I’m not against not having families with us,” Gambhir said.
“It is important to have families, but if your focus is towards making our country proud and you have a much bigger role than any other thing, and you’re committed to that goal, you’re committed to that cause, I think everything else is fine. But for me, I think that the cause and the goal are more important than any other thing.
The former India opener also opened up on his schedule after a Test match, saying he already starts thinking ahead of the next game regarding the combination. Citing the example of the Edgbaston Test win, Gambhir stated that he had started planning for the Lord’s Test moments after completing the assignment in Birmingham.
“That’s a tough question. I still haven’t understood how do I switch off because I never switch off, and sometimes it’s very funny and it’s very weird. Honestly, when we won the last Test match, the moment we won the last Test match, the first thing that came to my mind was what is going to be the combination for the next Test?”
“And when I went back to my room, I was thinking, how does that work? We’ve just won a Test match. The guys have worked hard to make a comeback after the first one. I already started thinking about what’s going to be the combination, how we can win the next one? But I still haven’t figured out, honestly, how to switch off,” said Gambhir.
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